If 911 had not occurred.....

[R1Geezer]

Do you think Saddam would still be there? Would the Taliban still be running Afghanistan? Was 911 just a trigger to something already going to happen or did they prevoke the West into it?

[jno]

Saddam: I think Bush knew all about Iraq (his father would have told him) and might well have found some excuse to invade it. Afghanistan: no, nobody cared about them and the west would have continued to ignore them and the Taliban would still be in power.

[R1Geezer]

So the Taliban must be a bit pi55ed off then, they had a cozy little nation in which to inact every extremity of their disgusting prehistoric religion, they could murder gays, rape children, murder the infidel and oppress women "legally" and their Al'Queda mates ruined it. I'm surprised old Bed linen and co can get the time of day in the area, explain that one!

[jno]

the Taliban basically sponsored al Qaeda, giving them shelter and support in the hopes they would spread Islamic fundamentalism worldwide. So I don't think 9/11 would have surprised them.

[jackthehat]

They operate on 'The enemy of my enemy must be be friend' basis..........they are all muslim brothers.
It is only once 'victory' has been established that the united front starts fracturing into separate sects, cultural ideologies, etc.

[jno]

not necessarily, jack; most Muslim regimes regard al-Qaeda with horror, though their downtrodden citizens might admire them. A bit like the way Irish governments always distanced themselves from the IRA.

[jackthehat]

I meant specifically Taleban/Al Qaeda/ young blokes from Birmingham who are content to fight a common foe...........

[jno]

oh, yes, fair enough. But they might not fragment all that easily; they've got a religion and an ideology and a programme in common.

[Gromit]

While out of administration, Ronald Rumsfeldt Dick Cheney and Paul Woferwitz busied themselves with a think Tank called The Project for the New American Century.

Two years before 911, they produced a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses". In it they stated it would take an event similar to the attack on Pearl Harbour to legitimise their military objectives.

Their object was to pinpoint "problem areas" of the world and suggesting regime change of unfavorable governments so that eventually the whole world will be unified under the banner of American democracy.

When all those men were back in office and in charge of America's defenses, a small group of illiterate fanatics managed to inflict a new Pearl Harbour on the worlds only Superpower on 911.

And regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq followed. Spooky coincidence that.

[Nosha123]

it depends on whether you believe 911 was the actions of the US on itself.. or an outside nation on the US...

there have been many conspiracies... but some of them I have seen do seem to hold rather a lot of worrying water!

Funny how the attack on the pentagon is never mentioned... have you all ever seen that movie put together from cctv cameras... showing the 'plane' attacking the pentagon on 9/11?

It was a bleedin missile!! not a plane!

[R1Geezer]

not taht old one Nosha, it's a plan, been explained lots of times.

[olddutch]

"The CIA and September 11 (German: Die CIA und der 11. September) is a controversial 2003 book by Andreas von Bülow, a former state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defence and an SPD member of the German parliament from 1969 to 1994.

book suggests that the 9/11 attacks were self-inflicted: a covert operation aimed at influencing domestic opinion and to persuade Americans to support the invasions of Afghanistan and of Iraq. It is written in a speculative style, laden with terms such as "could", "might", "maybe" and "if", and does not directly accuse the Central Intelligence Agency of direct responsibility for the attacks. It does, however, attempt to demolish the "conventional" account of the 9/11 attacks, and while it does not build up a substantive account to replace it, it leaves insinuations and rumours to suggest possibilities. For instance, while it is argued that such well-organized attacks could only occur with "the support of the intelligence agencies", the exact details of that support are left unspecified. The book suggests that no plane crashed into The Pentagon and none in Pennsylvania on 9/11, and that the alleged mobile phone calls on United Airlines Flight 93 were not real" ???

[123everton]

I think flight 93 was shot down, there were pictures on here of the attack on the Pentagon showing it was a plane (wheels in the wreckage etc), the biggest piece of evidence for the plane theory is the amount of eyewitnesses.
If it weren't for 9/11 the Taliban would still be in power, and as has been stated Bush would have found some sort of pretext to attack Iraq (when he came to power I just thought there's gonna be a war).
It often amuses me how we in the west view the east as being afflicted by some sort of toxin, that's best kept quarintined, no sooner have we extricated ourselves from a problem in the east, do we then (continually) fail to look at the consequences of our intervention.

[Seadragon]

I agree with the facts that Gromit states regarding the document and I agree with his opinion of Amercian world domination. If it wasn't the tyrannical act of 9/11, it would have been something else. 9/11 was the ultimate scare tactic to persuade the people of a 'war on terror', to provide an excuse to invade other countries for the financial interests of its own.

Why didn't it go into Saudi Arabia as most of the supposed terrorists originated there? Saddam had nothing to do with Al-Queda an excuse was needed and the US found one itself.

[123everton]

The good thing with Iraq is it's proximity to Iran, that's just a coincidence though I'm sure.